Pages

3.24.2011

Night Owl

Alas, I am, very much, a night owl. I seem to have the juvenile idea that I will miss out on something if I go to bed, so I fight the sleepiness, and stay up much too late. It doesn't help that Billy would prefer his day to end at 2am, and begin at noon, so he stays up late every evening also. I think I may just want to be in the same room with him, so I fight sleep even though I know I should be in bed.

The rain did not let up when I hit the trail for my hill workout with Nicole this morning, so we bundled up and prepared to get muddy. Her dad Jim {also our swim coach} ran with us, and requested we go up the "backside" of St. Joseph's hill instead of by our traditional way which takes us up the dam by the reservoir, and only has 3 intimidating hills and a nice easy descent coming down the back. The backside is a steady climb to the stop, about 2 miles of switchbacks and muddy terrain. The pouring rain mixed with my sweat, and probably a few tears too, as we made our way to the top, and we were soaked through within minutes. Coming down the dam area was a relief, and we had a mile long stretch of flat ground to the end, which we used to stretch our legs and upped our speed to a pretty uncomfortable pace, for me at least. Even with the rain and going up the harder way, we still knocked 3 minutes off our usual time, which was fantastic! We were splattered with mud, and our shoes and clothes were soaked, but I think we were all pretty proud of our 4 mile hill run in the rain with a better time than normal.

Time to update you on my healthy eating progress. I didn't make the Chicken stuffed with spinach, feta, and pine nuts like I had planned. Instead I had a Subway oven roasted chicken salad with Kraft fat free Italian dressing and 2 snack packs of baby carrots. I put it into livestrong when I got home, and noticed I was under 1200 calories for the day, and was still hungry. So I went into the kitchen, and announced to Billy all the lovely "healthy-ish" sweet snacks I could have. He told me to make a protein brownie, so I did! It's not the best tasting thing in the world, but it's filling, does a little something for a chocolate craving, and has 20 grams of protein for just 200 calories. It even sort of looks like a brownie, which is cool. Let me know what you think if you decide to make it!

1/2 tbsp baking soda {I'm experimenting with this quantity, as the brownie sort of tastes like it, but I'm not sure how much I can reduce it and still get the rising action that makes the whole thing a brownie}

You have been so dedicated with your training and diet! Goodness, I need you to come to my house and run a boot camp. Says the girl who just polished off a bag of Starburst jelly beans I found in my purse. Whoops.